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In honor of the release of the long-awaited sequel, Alice: Madness Returns, I thought I’d talk a bit about the original game, Alice. American McGee’s Alice (with American McGee, a former id Software employee as the designer) is a third-person shooter and platformer set years after Alice’s original adventures in Wonderland. If that seems familiar, it’s because other media (including last year’s Tim Burton movie) have done something similar, both with Alice’s story and other fairy tales.

The twist with American McGee’s Alice, however, is that in the time after the original adventures, Alice’s family was killed in a fire, and she’s been committed. She re-enters a dark and twisted version of Wonderland, and must battle her way through to save it – and her sanity. And as you can see from the original cover art, with Alice armed with a vorpal blade dripping blood, this ain’t for kids.

Gameplay is pretty standard for a third-person game of the era – mostly fighting, with some jumping puzzles (hope you don’t get TOO frustrated by those), but what makes it is the style. In a world populated by sci-fi alien-blasting games, this wierdly fantastical world stood out. If the new game looks interesting to you, check out the original (buyers of the PS3 or XBox360 versions of the game will actually get a code to use to play Alice, PC gamers are left out of this, which I find very strange), you won’t regret it.